The Son of God who loved me
I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me (Galatians 2:20).
By the time Paul wrote his letter to the Galatians he had been a Christian for around 20 years. During that time he had preached the Gospel continuously and ministered to the church of Christ. In his letter he reaffirms this Gospel and repels those who attempted to undermine it through a return to the Mosaic law and withering legalism. Such beliefs were self-centred and self-righteous. Over the centuries, the law powerfully demonstrated our inability to meet its demands and proved our need for salvation through the grace of God. He writes in ch. 2:16: “that we might be justified by faith in Christ and not by the works of the law; for by the works of the law no flesh shall be justified”.
Through the Holy Spirit, Paul dismantled the teaching, which opposed the grace and love of God. Such thinking is still present with us today and enslaves people in fruitless efforts to reach up to God. But in ch. 2:20, Paul does not present detailed and complicated explanations. He speaks from his heart as he focuses on what had changed and overwhelmed his life: the love of Christ. Paul preached about this love ceaselessly and led so many to salvation. But in this verse he pauses to wonder afresh at the astonishing fact that the Son of God loved him. He had once believed, in all the pride and self-will that then filled his life, that God could not fail to accept him. This all changed on the road to Damascus. The Lord stooped from the glory of heaven to say those simple words: “I am Jesus.” He emptied Saul’s heart of all its darkness, delusion, and violent sinfulness, and He filled it with the love that is stronger than death.
All those years later, and witnessing in others the unbelief that once engulfed him, he writes: “the Son of God … loved me and gave Himself for me”. The love of Christ had never diminished in the apostle’s heart. It was the driving force of his life, and it was something he could not keep to himself. He captures, in the briefest of expressions, the majesty of Christ’s love. It is one thing to know Jesus is the Saviour of the world, but it is another to see that He loved and died for me. He never divorced the preaching of the Gospel, and ministry of the whole counsel of God, and work of tent-making, from the Saviour’s love. It stimulated and directed his witness and worship. Paul lived in the present reality and wonder of the Saviour’s sacrifice for him. It is not by accident that on the cross, as Jesus was dying for the whole world, He brought one lost person to himself: a dying thief. In doing so, He was teaching us what Paul writes: “the Son of God who loved me and gave Himself for me”. There will be a countless host of the redeemed in heaven, and every single person will be there because Jesus loved and gave Himself for each and every one of us. To God, we are never a crowd of faces. He sees the one flock and knows every single one of us by name. The eternal love of the Father and the Son, and the power of the Spirit of God, hold us in an eternal safety and security.
“My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me. And I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; neither shall anyone snatch them out of My hand. My Father, who has given them to Me, is greater than all; and no one is able to snatch them out of My Father’s hand. I and My Father are one” (John 10:27-30).
Whatever circumstances we pass through, however deeply our faith is challenged, and our weakness felt, one thing remains constant, unchanging and victorious: “the Son of God … loved me and gave himself for me”.
